Running Adware Doctor on Your Mac? Remove it Now

Malwarebytes on Friday noted that this app and several others on the macOS App Store have been spotted siphoning off user data including browsing history (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox), a list of running processes, and a list of all software you’ve downloaded and from where, and sending it to a remote server in China.

What’s extra disturbing is that this app is reported as the 4th highest grossing app in the ‘Paid Utilities’ category in the App Store. And it’s been there for a while. This clearly flies in the face of Apple’s own App Store rules and any reasonable user’s privacy expectations. Apple has removed the app. If it’s on your Mac I’d suggest you do the same.

Thomas Reed, the director of Mac and mobile security at Malwarebytes, also mentions similar behavior at other apps doing similar data harvesting including Open Any Files, Dr. Antivirus, and Dr. Cleaner.

I’d agree with Reed that you should treat the Mac App Store with caution. Just because an app is there doesn’t mean it’s safe.